Copperhead

Copperhead is a 2013 drama film directed by Ron Maxwell and starring Billy Campbell, Angus Macfadyen, Augustus Prew, Lucy Boynton, Casey Thomas Brown, and Peter Fonda. The film is based on the 19th-century novel The Copperhead by Harold Frederic. The film was shot at Kings Landing Historical Settlement in New Brunswick, Canada and is set in upstate New York. It was released in the United States on June 28, 2013 to poor reviews and critical responses. Plot Set in 1862 in a rural upstate New York community referred to as "The Corners", Abner Beech is a dairy farmer and an antiwar Democrat, sharing quarters with the Irish Hurley family. While his neighbors take up the Union cause in the ongoing American Civil War, Beech believes that coercion in resisting the secession of the southern states is unconstitutional and not worth risking the lives of so many young men, gradually becomes more and more harassed for his views, derisively called a "Copperhead." Abner's son, Thomas Jefferson "Jeff" Beech enlists in the Union Army to impress a girl he likes, Esther Hagadorn, the daughter of radical abolitionist Jee Hagadorn, who works to turn the community against Abner. Esther visits the Beeches one evening to warn them over dinner that a violent mob, including her father, is coming to retaliate against Beech following the election of anti-war Democrats such as Horatio Seymour to the Governorship and downballot county offices. As the mob starts shooting at and setting fire to the farmhouse, Abner tells Esther to escape through the backdoor, but the house is shrouded in smoke and the door is jammed, prompting Esther to hide in the wine cellar. Later that evening, the Beech family is taking shelter in their barn and are visited by Jee who is looking for his daughter. Finding Esther's locket in the smoldering rubble of the farmhouse, Esther is believed dead in the fire, causing a distraught Jee to commit suicide.